"Brilliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought. On the screen of his imagination he saw himself and this sweet and beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing in good English, in a room of books and paintings and tone and culture, and all illuminated by a bright light of steadfast brilliance; while ranged about and fading away to the remote edges of the screen were antithetical scenes, each scene a picture, and he the onlooker, free to look at will upon what he wished. He saw these other scenes through drifting ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... await darkness before attempting to cross the plain, so deeply implanted are habits of thought; but of a sudden I recollected the perpetual noonday brilliance which envelopes Pellucidar, and with a smile I ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no more, she sat and pondered. Suddenly she bestowed upon him a smile whose brilliance might have turned the head of another man. Rising, she swept him a curtsey whose grace I have not ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... of Burns' personality. Many of his poems were never printed during his lifetime, the most remarkable of these being "The Jolly Beggars," a piece in which, by the intensity of his imaginative sympathy and the brilliance of his technique, he renders a picture of the lowest dregs of society in such a way as to raise it into the realm of ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... were equally simple. The curtain rises on a German raid. Noises off, etc.; the flashes of guns, the bursting of rum jars, the dazzling brilliance of flares lighting up the lowering night. On the entrance of the Hun into the trench (if he did), a watch would be kept on the hole (if any one was there to watch). On the sound of the first crash of breaking china, no action. On the sound of the second crash of breaking china, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... faces of Skale and Mrs. Mawle. In their case it had forged its way through the more or less defiling garment of a worn and experienced flesh. But the light in Miriam's eyes and skin was there because it had never been extinguished. She had retained her pristine brilliance of soul. Through the little spirit of the perplexed secretary ran a thrill of genuine worship ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... sufferings, real or imaginary; few imaginative writers have the every-day virtues. His egotism, too, is difficult to defend. If, as he himself admits, he invariably took an undue share of talk, often in fact monopolizing it, wherever he was, we must remember that the brilliance of his gifts was admitted by all; less pardonable is his habit of disparaging other men, and especially other men of letters. His pen-pictures of Mill, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... with jewels of a pronounced, distinct green; the chrysoberyls of asparagus green; the chrysolites of leek green; the olivines of olive green. They hung from branches of almandine and ouwarovite of a violet red, darting spangles of a hard brilliance like tartar micas ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... back: and now she observed with some girlish anxiety the young man's unwonted solemnity, the strange brilliance of his eyes. A certain nervousness began to show through her cold calm: her unconscious hand wound the taut sheet round and round the tiller, an injudicious business in view of the gusty breeze. How to be rid most quickly of the interloper?... She might, of course, put ashore ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and the moon arose, lighting the scenery with its brilliance and setting the still dripping trees aglitter with its glory. Moonlight often made Dorothy wakeful and did so on this eventful night. Its rays streaming across her unshaded window roused her to sit up, and ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... filled with a clear, cold sunlight whose brilliance irradiated the giant sphere of earth ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... He was a Jew named Abraham, a blond, rather stout young man, shy and very unassuming; but he had remarkable gifts. He entered the hospital with a scholarship, and during the five years of the curriculum gained every prize that was open to him. He was made house-physician and house-surgeon. His brilliance was allowed by all. Finally he was elected to a position on the staff, and his career was assured. So far as human things can be predicted, it was certain that he would rise to the greatest heights of his profession. Honours and wealth awaited him. Before he entered ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... statement of first and second subject, no working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring—these were a mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting. Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his nights ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... herself a comfortable footing in our society. We all thought her more remarkable for her mental attributes than for physical perfection, but nevertheless she was in her own way a sightly woman. She had no special brilliance, either of eye or complexion, such as would produce sudden flames in susceptible hearts, nor did she seem to demand instant homage by the form and step of a goddess; but we found her to be a good-looking woman of some thirty or thirty-three years of age, with soft, peach-like ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... retained, you might say, merely the skin and bones of a splendid countenance. The skin was brown as parchment, and wrinkled, but the bones were elegant—Hamlet's skull, not Yorick's. His eyes were perfectly round, gray below a kind of yellow brilliance, as if an old eagle within looked out beneath the steel bars of those bristling brows. His nose belonged to the colonial period of American history. It was an antique, and a very fine one, well preserved, ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of Macaulay and Carlyle, of Stubbs and Gardiner, would be found voting in unison in my imaginary Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury, is "the historian and the man of letters," thus ranking with Thucydides and Tacitus. These three are put in the highest class, exemplifying that "brilliance of style and accuracy of statement are perfectly compatible in an historian."[52] Accepting this authoritative classification it is well worth while to point out the salient differences between the ancient historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have twenty-four years of contemporary ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... came on us at the beginning of this week gives by contrast a strange and terrible point to the calamity, the announcement of which sent such a shock through the whole country on Monday last. Summer days in all their brilliance seemed come at last, after a long waiting which made them the more delightful. But as people came down to breakfast on that morning, or as they gathered at railway stations on their way to business, the almost incredible tidings met them that the Bishop of Winchester was dead; ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the personal or political or religious aversion which is excited by Mr. Bradlaugh, it is impossible for even his bitterest opponents to deny the brilliance of the series of victories which he has won in the law courts. His acquittal in the blasphemy prosecution of Saturday was but the latest of a number of encounters in which he has succeeded in turning the tables upon his ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... mysterious whisper among its thirsty shrubs. The bungalow it surrounded showed dimly in the starlight, a wooden structure with a raised verandah and a flight of steps leading up to it. A light thrown by a red-shaded lamp shone out from one of the rooms, casting a shaft of ruddy brilliance into the night as though it defied the splendour without. It shone upon Tommy's face as he paused, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... darkness of the willow forest, little dancing fire-flies came before her in scores, leaping from grass to grass, from tree to tree, dissolving one into the other, then leaping apart and dancing alone; their flames assumed a pale, lustreless brilliance in the darkness, like some fire of mystery or the burning gases of ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... charges for this lot had gone up with Sally Uncle One two days before. But now he'd actually touched the metal cylinder and, as though the brief contact had completed some obscure mental circuit, the mad idea was conceived, flared up into an irrepressible brilliance and exploded in ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... protracted until a late hour in the morning. It was said that Josephine gained a social victory that evening, corresponding with that which Napoleon had gained in the pageant of the day. In these scenes Hortense shone with great brilliance. She was young, beautiful, graceful, amiable, witty, and very highly accomplished. In addition to this, she was the stepdaughter of the First Consul, who was ascending in a career of grandeur which was to terminate no one ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... something vivid and arresting about her to-night, as though she were tremulously aware that she was about to take the first step along her road as a public singer. A touch of excitement had added an unwonted brilliance to her eyes, while a faint flush came and went swiftly ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... flanking the great silent river were full of alluring enchantments. Never had the moon shed such velvety, silvery light; never had the stars flashed with such supernatural brightness; nor had meteorites drawn such lines of fiery brilliance across ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the brilliance of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... has his receptive period, his time to learn, and that, like some mammals, he learns everything he needs to know in his first year or two; and that, having acquired his proper song, he adds little or nothing to it thereafter, although the song may increase in power and brilliance when the bird comes to full maturity. This, I think, holds true of all birds, like the nightingale, which have a singing period of two or three months and are songless for the rest of the year. That long, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... woman figure in all literature. She reminds the Chorus that she is no child and is not known to have a slumbering wit. When they enquire how she has learned so quickly of the capture of Troy, she describes with great brilliance the long chain of beacon fires she has caused to be made, stretching from Ida in Troyland to Argos. She imagines the wretched fate of the conquered and the joy of the victors, rid for ever of their watchings beneath the open sky. Striking the same ominous note as Chalcas ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the tombstone where Conrad reclined, Yet they shrank at the cold chilling blast of the wind, When a strange silver brilliance pervaded the scene, And a figure advanced—tall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... half four, etc.; but when you are near me I can fancy that I too shine, and vainly suppose it to be my proper light; whereas by my extreme darkness when you are not by, it clearly can only be by a reflected brilliance that I seem aught but dull. Then for the moral part of me: if it were not for you and little Odden, I should feel by no means sure that I had any affection power in me.... Even the muscular me suffers a sad deterioration in your absence. I don't ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came slowly, her short Russian skirt swinging out from her ankles. The brilliance of her face showed clear at a distance, vermilion on white, flaming; hard, crystal eyes, sweeping and flashing; bobbed hair, brown-red, shining in the sun. Then a dominant, squarish jaw, and a mouth exquisitely formed, but thin, a vermilion thread drawn between her staring, insolent ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... and brilliant period of Tegnr's literary activity is contemporaneous with his incumbency of the Greek professorship at Lund (1812-1824). In this period he enriches Swedish literature with a series of lyrics which still rank among the best both in point of lucidity of thought and brilliance of diction. Only a few that stand out most prominently in a list of about one hundred poems from this period ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... package. Thanks be to David for joy in the playhouse. Wizard, magician, necromancer of switchboards, He hath woven spells from the actual, Keeping ideals and ideas well in the background. Like Gautier, these things delight him: Gold, marble and purple; brilliance, solidity, color. He can stage Tiffany's jewels but not Maeterlinck's bees. Deep in his soul there are tempests Revealed in the storms of his dramas— Sandstorm and snowstorm, rainstorm and hurricane. That nature revealed in its subtle reactions Would show in its deeps ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... the glorious standard of preceptor Drona's son, Lion's tail in golden brilliance on ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... "yes, Jimmy is a good chap. I've known him for years. I was at college with him. He hasn't got my brilliance of intellect; but he has some wonderfully fine qualities. For one thing, I should say he had put more deadbeats on their legs again than half the men in New ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... through the world like meteors; their brilliance, lightning-like at their first appearance, continues to cast a dazzling gleam across the centuries: such were Alexander the Great, Mozart, Shakespeare and Napoleon. Others, on the contrary, do not instantly command the admiration of the masses; it is necessary, in order that their ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... of color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance. Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum. Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly clustered hemispheres of purplish white are seen on the rocky slope where the nine-bark grows above the lingering columbines. White ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... one who should be confined in a cask and sent rolling downhill. It was impossible to light a fire, and we could not therefore dress our food or obtain a warm drink. The cold was beyond language severe. The rigging was glazed with ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit, and catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had no means of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to move as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm. Never ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... with extraordinary brilliance, and the fog, far from veiling its lustre, seemed to make it more disconcerting. Persons assumed strange forms and the shapes of things were modified or exaggerated. Our dazzled eyes were mocked by depressing ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... single one among this number. Judge of the efforts you have to make and of the desperateness of the struggle. You must devour each other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not fifty thousand good places. Do you know how one gets on here? By the brilliance of genius or the adroitness of corruption one must enter the mass of men like a cannon-ball, or slip into it like the plague. Honesty is of no use." Having a tempter about him of Vautrin's calibre, strong, undauntable, as humorous as ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... we, now so wretched, will lie stretched out Free of old doubt, on our cushions of ease. And, like a gold canopy over our bed, The skin of Leviathan, tail-tip to head, Soon will be spread till it covers the skies. Light will still rise from it; millions of bright Facets of brilliance, shaming the white Glass of the moon, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Dark waters into crystalline brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... was delicious, and my cook was pronounced to have won his spurs. Though her exalted rank and the brilliance of her attire gave Signora Isoia-Bella the first place of right, she was nevertheless eclipsed by my two nieces. The young Genoese was all attention for the fair Marseillaise, and I could see that she was not displeased. I sincerely wished to see her in love with someone, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Burr, who was likewise in his prime. De Witt Clinton was developing that breadth of intellect which afterward made him the pride of New York, and was about to take his seat in the State Senate. It was an era remarkable for brilliance of wit and eloquence, as well as for fierce political strife. The duel was a common method of settling disputes among lawyers and politicians, and few men then entered the political arena who were not good shots. Looking back ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... overwhelming majority of teachers are firm believers in nasal resonance, and make it an important feature of their methods. They believe that this resonance is the most important factor in giving to the tone its "point," brilliance, and carrying power. ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... making some changes in his costume, he went to the theatre, and saw Kean play something of Shakespeare's. When the play was over, and he was out in the frosty air again, he felt it impossible to sleep. It was after midnight before he returned to his hotel, with flushed cheeks, and a peculiar brilliance in his eyes. He slept heavily, but awoke early in the morning with a slight feeling of feverishness. It was Sunday morning. He thought of his study in the parsonage at Witton, with its bright fire, its simplicity, its repose. He thought of the church, and of the congregation which ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... no government of which we have authentic history ever gave to women a share in the sovereignty. This is not true, for the annals of monarchies and despotisms have been rendered illustrious by queens of surpassing brilliance and power. But even if it be true that no nation ever enfranchised woman—even so until within one hundred years universal or even general suffrage was unknown ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... frequented a hill, where the pores of his soul opened to a new air. "Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air and the distant sea.... I desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory. I addressed the sun, desiring the sole equivalent of his light and brilliance, his endurance, and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite color and sweetness. The rich blue of the unobtainable flower of the sky drew my soul toward it, and there it rested, for pure color is the rest of the heart. By all ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the sweet morning air and sunshine. Again he took up his fork and tossed the newly cut grass up into the light, spreading it on the ground with a methodical sweep of his young arm. The sun had risen higher now and its dazzling brilliance poured all about him. Up and down the meadow he went and presently he was surprised to find himself alone near the point from which he had started. His fellow-laborers were no longer in sight. The ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... at least the semblance of feudal distinctions. Formerly favouring commerce and industry and also the rise of the burgher class, as being necessary conditions both of the national power and of its own brilliance, absolute monarchy now puts all kinds of obstacles in the way of commerce and industry, which have become more and more dangerous weapons in the hands of a powerful bourgeoisie. From the town, which fostered its rise, it casts an anxious and ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... target. He is that rare thing in English novel-making, a notable thinker. Of all nineteenth century novelists he leads for intellectual stimulation. With fifty faults of manner and matter, irritating, even outrageous in his eccentricities, he can at his best startle with a brilliance that is alone of its kind. It is because we hail him as philosopher, wit and poet that he fails comparatively as artist. He shows throughout his work a sublime carelessness of workmanship on the structural side of his craft; but in those essentials, dialogue, character and scene, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... together. Her eyes had a brilliance. Sometimes she half covered them with her lids. And she caught the looks of men in her eyes. That ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... kept an earlier tryst. Not a cloud marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. From her bed room window she could see the whole length of the Ober-Engadin, till the view was abruptly shut off by the giant shoulders of Lagrev and Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape's most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... none of the "dim, religious light" in the interior decoration of white and gold, the subtle colouring of the symbolic frescoing and the brilliance of the gold and brazen altar furnishing. At a service celebrated especially for the Papal Zuaves, the picturesque red and grey of their uniform, the priests in gorgeous canonicals of scarlet, stiff with gold, the acolytes in white surplices and the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... jealous. To be sure he was not superlatively handsome, but he had a foreign air, which was considerable among the girls; and his appearance indicated wealth, for his dress was of the first quality and cut. He had half a dozen glistening rings on his hands; he wore a breast-pin of dazzling brilliance; and every time he moved a chained lion could not have made more noise, and clatter, and show with his fetters, than he did with a massive double-linked chain, that danced and ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... slingers rebounded from his reverberating shell of steel, but he fired carefully, steadily, and powerfully until his last arrow had been loosed. Then, the wicked dirk in his left hand and the long and heavy saber weaving a circular path of brilliance in the sun, he stepped forward a couple of paces to meet the attackers. For a few moments nothing could stand before that fiercely driven blade—severed heads, limbs, and fragments of torsos literally filled the air, but sheer weight of numbers bore him down. As he fell, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... (so far) had been her marriage. Hopelessly bowled over, as he called it, by her detailed loveliness, and not even frightened by her general brilliance, Lord Chetwode had insisted on her making the match of the previous season. He was a good-looking, amiable, and wealthy young man, who was as lavish as if he had not had a penny, and who showed his extravagantly long descent chiefly by being (for a racing man) rather eccentrically ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... almost deserted thoroughfare. It was now between ten and eleven, a time when the flame of the day seems to die down before bursting out into a last brilliance, when the houses of entertainment ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Full the sun fell upon her in a sheen of shimmering splendour, throwing great reflected lights which dazzled the eye so that it could scarce hold any continued gaze upon her. And, indeed, every ornament on her seemed to be made of the precious metal, now glowing to exceeding brilliance in the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... on their faces with a white brilliance, as they stood, their hands clasped, for a moment. The girl never saw it afterwards without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal pain. Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull sense that the day was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... will calm you. Be calm, don't be frightened," he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it afterwards) became suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one with an amethyst, and another with a transparent bright yellow stone, of great brilliance. And long afterwards he remembered with wonder how those rings had riveted his attention through all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to tear himself away from them and dismiss ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the brilliance of occasional parts and passages alone, which justifies us in pronouncing the "Roman" an extraordinary production. We look at it as a whole, and thus regarding it, we find—first, a wondrous freedom from faults, major or minor, juvenile or non-juvenile; wondrous, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... heavens. The observer sits or lies on a sloping wooden arrangement, which he can wheel to any part of the observatory as the position of the telescope may require. Within it is advisable to have things as dark as possible, in order to enhance the brilliance ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that brightness and joviality which entitle a dance to call itself a success. The cotillon reached brilliance, owing to the captaincy of Captain Deverax. Several score opprobrious epithets were applied to the Captain in the course of the night, but it was agreed nemine contradicente that, whatever he would have done in front of a Light Brigade at Balaclava, as a leader of cotillons ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... my lover's life, in me Once concentrated, now diffused, illumes The endless reaches of eternity With infinite brilliance, ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... gates of our earth-moulded senses, Pour the eternal glory on our souls, And, while ten thousand chariots bring the dawn, Hurl us poor midgets trembling to our knees. Glory and glamour and rapture of lucid air, Ice cold, with subtle colours of the sky Embraced her broken spars, belted her hulk With brilliance, while she dipped her jacinth beak In waves of mounded splendour, and sometimes A great ice-mountain flashed and floated by Throned on the waters, pinnacled and crowned With all the smouldering jewels in the world; Or in the darkness, glimmering berg on berg, All emerald to the moon, went by like ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... were strikingly alike—hair piled high in a wide wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the mother's. One would have appraised ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the hero, together with whom the heroine ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... least, the memory of the discomforts of the journey; and the warning of the old witch, if remembered at all, was thought of with pity or dismissed with mirth. The festivities, which were maintained with vigour and brilliance for a considerable time, surrounded the king with both friends and foes. Sir Robert Stuart, who had been promised the kingdom by Sir Richard Graeme, was actually acting as chamberlain to the king he was plotting to dethrone; and the Earl of Athole and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... tone was delivered with the full force and brilliance of her magnificent voice, and was prolonged until the thrill produced in the listener became almost painful in its intensity. Again I ask, why did this world-famous singer perform this passage always in the same way? Unreflecting people may ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... them. Hester was in the highest spirits, and as she sat waiting for the first plat, chattering, and nibbling at her roll, her black felt hat with its plume of cock feathers falling back from the brilliance of her face, she once more attracted all the attention available; from the two savants who, after a morning in the Chateau, were lunching at a farther table; from an American family of all ages reduced to silence by sheer wonder and contemplation; from the waiters, and, not least, from the hotel ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour. People are utterly wrong in their ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Fate rises from the Wrist (1-1, Plate XI.) and goes straight up the centre of the palm to the Mount of Saturn, provided at the same time the Line of Sun (4-4, Plate XI.) is found well marked, luck, brilliance, and success will attend the Destiny, and extreme good ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... place rang with howls and shouts of fiendish rejoicing at the brilliance of the feat which had culminated in the capture of this pestilent young foreigner, whose gallant resistance, so far from exciting admiration in the breasts of his captors, seemed to have filled them with the ferocity of wild beasts. As he was raised to his feet preparatory ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... clinging evening dress, was a curving group of graces. The beauty of her face was enhanced, rather than lessened, by the pallor of it, for the fading of the richer colors gave to the fine features an expression more spiritual, made plainer the underlying qualities that her accustomed brilliance might half-conceal. She paid absolutely no attention to the other two in the room, but went straight to the desk, and there halted, gazing with her softly penetrant eyes of deepest violet into ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... "we have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the thought, but that ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and nodding. Stafford could see by the brilliance of his eyes, the flush on his face, that he was excited and was struggling ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... has ever had a great power over all Britons; the true traveller's instinct is in their blood, and the noble array of red markings on our maps amply testify to the brilliance of their achievements. Knowing this, I speak with care of a country that I have traversed in my wanderings, so that if others who read these words may feel impelled to take up the pilgrim staff, they may at least rely ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Miss Manisty's tea, however, nothing could be divined of those scathing Latin sheets on which he had left his secretary employed. He had the air of one at peace with all the world—hardly stirred indeed by the brilliance of his host. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... neglected. In short, it is not so meritorious to speak our native tongue correctly, as it is scandalous to speak it otherwise; nor is it so much the property of a good Orator, as of a well-bred Citizen. But in the choice of his words (in which he had more regard to their weight than their brilliance) and likewise in the structure of his language, and the compass of his periods, Antonius conformed himself to the dictates of reason, and, in a great measure, to the nicer rules of art: though ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... essential to salvation; Tenison had done likewise at the execution of Monmouth. Stillingfleet, Patrick, White Kennett, had all written in its favor; and to William Sherlock belongs the privilege of having defended and attacked it in two pamphlets each of which challenges the pithy brilliance of the other. Clearly, so far as consistency is in question, the Nonjurors might with justice contend that they had right on their side. And even if it is said that the policy of James introduced a new situation the answer surely is that Divine Right and non-resistance can, by their very nature, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... for Mr. Szephalmi. The servants at once announced his arrival, and presently a broken-down, prematurely aged man appeared, with sunken cheeks, pale withered lips, and staring eyes starting from their sockets, and with but the ghost of their former brilliance and expressiveness. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... no dais on which the King was seated in state, as I had expected. No figure stood out conspicuous in the throng as that of royalty. I gazed at one and another, as we stood in the doorway, our eyes still half dazzled by the glare of light and by the brilliance of the assembled company, but I could by no means distinguish the King from any of the rest. Many men, by their gorgeous raiment, might well be the greatest one ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Few are the famous speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much readiness, force, and brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver such valuable thoughts in such choice words that posterity will read them as literature. Some few of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know how far ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... inventive tour de force that seldom, if ever, has been equalled for its brilliance and far-reaching consequences, James Watt radically altered the steam engine not only by adding a separate condenser but by creating a whole new family of linkages. His approach was largely empirical, as we ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... the long vistas of kneeling figures; the lovely contrasts of the flowing draperies; the trailing splendor of the priests' robes dying into the black note made by the nuns' sombre skirts; the gossamer brilliance of the hundreds of white veils, through which the young rapture of religious awe on lips and brow made even commonplace features beautiful; the choristers' scarlet petticoats; the culminating note of splendor, the Archbishop, throned like some antique ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... nothing else. They must not be immature men and women. Superficially, of course, as I have said, every child of talent becomes world-weary and sophisticated; the bright surface of the mind is dulled with things half-perceived. But this, the result of moving in an atmosphere of hectic brilliance, devoid of spiritual nourishment, is not fundamental: it is but a phase. Old-fashioned as the idea may be, it is still true that artificial excitement is useful, indeed necessary, to the artist; and conditions of life that would spoil or utterly destroy ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... us to an empire. It is because we Germans are artists and dreamers and individualists that we could never manage our own affairs, that we have always been "non-political animals."[6] On the contrary, it is because the Prussian has no brilliance, no romance, no personality, that he makes a splendid soldier and a model bureaucrat. Two things above all were required to make Germany into a powerful State—a strong army and a well-ordered administration. Prussia has given ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... chinaware of Sevres—the best of all that France could produce was centred between these four walls. Nothing had ever passed through that door which was not a masterpiece of its kind. And amid all this brilliance the master of it sat, his chin resting upon his hands, his elbows upon the table, with eyes which stared vacantly at the wall, a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strangely as they rested upon mine. Not until now had the wonderful intelligence in their purple-green depths struck me so forcibly. From the orange-tinted lamps before her on the table the light which shone up in her face seemed to increase their brilliance, accentuate their expression and their power. It imparted, too, to her extraordinary complexion a peculiar, livid tint, while the masses of her burnished, red-brown hair, coiled about her head in great ropes and dressed low in her neck, was shot with a chestnut shade which greatly ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... the meal that followed, Mary, the toast of the tetrarchy, she whose wit and brilliance had been echoed even in Rome, wrapped herself in a mantle of silence. The guardsman jested in vain. To the others she paid as much attention as the sun does to a torch; and when at last Pandera, annoyed, perhaps, at her disregard of a quip of his, attempted to whisper ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... sunset and in the morning for a short time before sunrise, but it can never be seen, as the outer planets are seen, in the mid-heaven or late at night. When seen low in the twilight, at evening or morning, it glows with the brilliance of a bright first-magnitude star, and is a beautiful object, though few casual watchers of the stars ever catch sight of it. When it is nearest the earth and is about to pass between the earth and the sun, it temporarily disappears in the glare of the sunlight; ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... Billy. Thunders of applause greeted his appearance in the "mystic square" last night. He flashed round his ponderous opponent, mesmerising him with the purity of his style, the accuracy of his hitting, the brilliance of his foot-work. He held the vast audience spell-bound. BECKETT won on a knock-out in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... congregated from miles around, each contributing whatever he could muster of food and drink—the old Earl of Dunraven, as well as others, had a bar!—and seated at a long, single table. What genuine, home-made fun! What pranks, what wit—yes, what brilliance! Some one, usually Parson Lamb, sometimes gaunt old Scotch John Cleave, the postmaster, rarely some noted visitor, who either from choice or ill-health lingered on into the winter, made a speech. There were declamations, debates, the interminable, singsong ballads of the frontier, usually accompanied ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Sonata in B-flat minor;[46] this foundation key being comparable to the basic color-scheme of a painting. There is also a particular aesthetic effect and color-appeal associated with each key; and the listener should train himself to be sensitive to the brilliance of such keys as D major and E major, the richness of B major, the dignity of E-flat major, the almost cloying sweetness of D-flat major and of G-flat major and the tragic depth of B minor and G minor. No piece, however, should remain for long in the same ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew to dissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by some half forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping from him amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these ladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no longer gave vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances that he was now assured were being made to him, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save others ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... were almost simultaneous. He was out of bed, standing in the doorway. The moon's unclouded brilliance seemed to flood his brain; to clear it of cobwebs and dispel all desire of sleep. For he loved the veiled spirit of night as most men love the unveiled face of morning; and in no way, perhaps, was he more clearly of the East. In a land where the sun slays his thousands, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... things lasted a long time, but comets do not always shine with the same brilliance. Everything gets worn out in society. One would have said that gradually the eagerness of the cutters grew feebler; they seemed to hesitate at times when the tray was held out to them; this office, once so much coveted, became less and less ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... so happy that her happiness lived in her face in a sort of delicate brilliance. Jane Foster observed the change in her with exceeding comfort, her view being that spacious quarters, fresh air, and sounder sleep had done great things ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... So much brilliance and severity in the display of his sovereign power proved of service to the irreconcilable enemies who were stirring up Europe against the already uncontrollable ambition of the new emperor. Pitt had already returned to power (19th May, 1804), though with less support in Parliament, and very ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... events, our garments are illuminated; they shine; they are made nuptial.' ('Conjugial Love,' 19, 20, 21.) Then he saw the two Angels, one coming from the South, the other from the East; the Angel of the South was in a chariot drawn by two white horses, with reins of the color and brilliance of the dawn; but lo, when they were near him in the sky, chariot and horses vanished. The Angel of the East, clothed in crimson, and the Angel of the South, in purple, drew together, like breaths, and mingled: one was the Angel of Love, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... nothing, excepting that rivers run into the sea, and that tides have to be watched. In the daytime he toils on the brown flood of the Tyne; and at night he still toils on the same flood, which is then lit into lurid brilliance by the fires of the low factory chimneys and furnaces. People who work on crowded waterways seem to acquire an extraordinary proficiency in the art of abuse, and in the said art a keelman is much superior to the Thames bargeman. His collection of epithets is large, and, since ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... handsome and heavy hat of English manufacture, as witness the name of a Bond Street hatter in its crown; by the slight discolouration of its leather, had seen service without, however, depreciating in utility, needing only brushing and ironing to restore its pristine brilliance; carried neither name nor initials on its lining; and lacked every least hint as to its ownership—or so it seemed until the prying fingers of P. Sybarite turned down the leather and permitted a visiting card concealed therein to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... soft brilliance over the land of Burmah. Its rays pierced the small slit windows in the cell of the fanatic An-we-lota, and lighted up the fierce faces of the dacoits and desperate men, who from time to time stealthily entered, until a close-packed band ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... look ahead, and so suddenly threw on the brake that Sam and the chauffeur tumbled awake. Across the road stretched the great bulk of a touring-car, its lamps burning dully in the brilliance of the moon. Around it, for greater warmth, a half-dozen figures stamped upon the frozen ground, and beat themselves with their arms. Sam and the chauffeur vaulted into the road, ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... self-sufficiency and await guidance. It will surely come to those who wait in trust, a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he wrote from whose ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... paradoxes as if they were the tritest things in the world; all epigram and impudence he trails his coat assiduously, and, while his brilliance is vastly entertaining, his method of bouncing us into liking what he likes, and hating what he hates, is likely to infuriate quite as many readers as it takes by ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... scent filled the room. In spite of the coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which came through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong; the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on her memory—Louisa, a triumphant beauty, living on the homage she received, all brilliance, grace, and enjoyment. But there was a darkening background which grew more prominent. Poor Louisa had little wisdom by nature, and her education had been solely directed to enable her to shine in the world, not to render her fit for the companionship of a man of domestic ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these tigers among men will certainly slay Dhananjaya. Karna also, I suppose, is equal unto Bhishma and Drona and Kripa. O Bharata, Rama himself had told him,—"Thou art equal unto me." Karna had two ear-rings born with him, of great brilliance and beauty; for Sachi's gratification Indra begged them of that repressor of foes, in exchange, O king, of an infallible and terrible shaft. How would Dhananjaya, therefore, escape with life from Karna who is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not enter in upon his squirearchy early in life. The estate when he came of age had already had some years to recover itself, and as he went from capital to capital, he was quite content to draw from it an income which enabled him to shine with peculiar brilliance among his brethren. He had visited Bragton once since the old squire's death, and had found the place very dull and uninviting. He had no ambition whatever to be master of the U.R.U.; but did look forward to a time when ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of show and display, the King left nothing undone which might give brilliance to the reception of so renowned an embassy. The Court wore an air of such splendour and magnificence that these Mussulmans, used though they were to Asiatic pomp, seemed surprised and amazed at so brilliant a reception, at which nothing, indeed, had ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... corresponding corner at the other end of this wall is another of the many "Last Suppers" which Tintoretto devised. It does not compare in brilliance with that in S. Giorgio Maggiore, but it must greatly have interested the painter as a composition, and nothing could be more unlike the formality of the Leonardo da Vinci convention, with the table set square to the spectators, than this ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... person, was growing like a little shadow or model of Norman, had, unlike him, a very dexterous pair of hands, and made himself extremely useful in all such works. On the other hand, the Cleveland stall seemed chiefly to rely for brilliance on the wit of Harvey Anderson, who was prospering at his college, and the pride of his family. A great talker, and extremely gallant, he was considered a far greater acquisition to a Stoneborough drawing-room than was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... interview. It sealed for ever the allegiance of the youth to his self-chosen leader. He had prepared Sheridan, and through him Fox and Bouverie, for this change of front. The openness, the charm, the self-effacing patriotism of the Minister thenceforth drew him as by an irresistible magnet. The brilliance and joviality of Fox and Sheridan counted as nothing against the national impulse which the master now set in motion and the pupil was destined to carry to further lengths. There was a natural sympathy between these men both in aim and temperament. It is a sign of the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... it, except that it was yellow and had the general appearance of a toad. For some reason it seemed to attract Sir Robert Aylward, for he halted to stare at it, then stretched out his hand and switched on another lamp, in the hard brilliance of which the thing upon the pedestal suddenly declared itself, leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted by a woman's head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness, sunk back between high but ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... lanky youth, with a long, cadaverous countenance and sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however, and redeemed to a certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary brilliance, "it is the Prince of Wales!" The drawling, awe-struck tones, in the silence that had fallen, were audible to all in the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... combine. The loveliness of her features was so heavenly that it carried to the soul an indefinable sentiment of ecstacy, a delightful calm. She was fair, but her beautiful blue eyes equalled the finest black eyes in brilliance. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... can not but despise, and yet such, with exceptions, was the character of the common Indian. That magnanimity which at times has shed immortal brilliance upon humanity is a rare virtue, even in civilized life; in the savage it is ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... though the first cofradia had been due in the Plaza an hour ago, and twilight was falling over the vast square, ethereally clear and pale. Only the figure of Faith on the soaring Giralda, turned as if to watch the scene, still glittered in the sun; and its dazzling brilliance had faded before a bugle note rang out, poignant as a cry of bitter sorrow ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Jordaens, and represents the triumph of Prince Frederick Henry—the object of the whole scheme being the glorification of the House of Orange, in 1649. Most of the other pictures are of Theodore van Thulden, who in these works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of his colouring. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... to recapitulate all the circumstances of Erskine's rapid rise in his profession—a rise due to his effective brilliance and fervor in political trial: but this chapter on lawyers' fees would be culpably incomplete, if it failed to notice some of its pecuniary consequences. In the eighth month after his call to the bar he thanked Admiral Keppel for a splendid fee of one thousand ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... in black, for she was, of course, still in mourning for her brother; but, in spite of her sable habiliments, she startled the parson by the brilliance of her beauty. There was a quiet dignity of demeanour natural to Fanny Wyndham; a well-balanced pose, and a grace of motion, which saved her from ever looking awkward or confused. She never appeared to lose her self-possession. Though never arrogant, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... been the face of a dead woman, so still, so waxen was it, were it not for the eager brilliance of the eyes. In them, fixed watchfully upon the closed door, was concentrated the whole vitality of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... he does not hold his tongue easily. He certainly does not, and when it wags it wags foolishly, and, as he admits, maliciously, albeit sometimes amusingly, and with superficial brilliance. He says the Irish do not consider England their country yet. Of course they do not. Why should the Irish consider themselves English? Neither do the Scots, nor the Welsh, nor the Canadians, nor will they ever so think. But they ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... it represent the inflammations of the sex illusion, comment upon Nietzsche and Cervantes, recount the adventures, somersaults and end of a legendary rascal, portray a hero of our time. He made all these intellectual concepts plastic in a music of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic symphonies can rival. Other and former composers, no doubt, had dreamt of making the orchestra more concretely expressive, more precisely narrative ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... finding fit embodiment in speech And gesture and address, he made his way, Unconscious all, to the full-orbed respect Of students and professors; for whose praise More than his worth, society, so called, To its rooms in that great city of the North, Invited him. He entered. Dazzled at first By brilliance of the shining show, the lights, The mirrors, gems, white necks, and radiant eyes, He stole into a corner, and was quiet Until the vision too had quieter grown. Bewildered next by many a sparkling word, Nor knowing the light-play of polished minds, Which, like rose-diamonds cut in many facets, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to progress exists than the reputation for talent which this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous for their obstinacy. In conversation they are prolix and pretentious, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... than Faust's creator) sets up his lordly pleasure-house apart from the ways of men, until at last, confuted by experience, he renounces his folly. Sordello cannot claim the mature and classical brilliance of the one, nor the limpid melodious beauty of the other; but it approaches Faust itself in its subtle soundings of the mysteries of the intellectual life. It is a young poet's attempt to cope with the problem of the poet's task and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... calculated by priests and builders thousands of years ago, was as thrilling to-day as on the morning when the sun first poured gold upon the altar. The sightless faces of the statues were given eyes of an unearthly brilliance to stare into ours, and search our souls. But with most of the party, to be thrilled for a minute was enough. As the sun's finger began to move, they found it time to move also. There was the whole temple to be seen, and then the walk back to the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... have visited the Town Hall of Calcutta, and who retain a recollection of the brilliance of its re-unions, with all their gay variety of concert, opera, and acted charade, cannot help seeing that Bombay lags very far behind; it is, therefore, unwise to provoke comparisons, and the society here should rather pride itself upon what it will do, than upon what it has ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... his venerable head resting on the mysterious book, and the black dwarf at his feet jealously guarding his slumber. So she trimmed his silver lamp for him afresh, so that it burned with a yet more wonderful brilliance, laid a cluster of sweet flowers beside him, and then gladly flitting from the gloomy rock, spread her glistening wings, and darted up into the air; up, up, far above the tops of the lofty trees, flashing like a bright vision through the now darkening ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... absorbs their daughterhood and relieves them of their mothers, seem to be in the main content with the calm and limited existence which their relations and the voice of tradition assign to them. Most of them after they have passed through the flashing brilliance of their first season, and the less radiant glow of their second, are happy enough to spend the time that must elapse ere the destined knight shall sound the trumpet of release at the gates of the fortress, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit, a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal. In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the public. He vindicates himself from censures, and with dignity rather than arrogance enforces his own claims to kindness ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... lesson, but returns again and again till he is destroyed. Such a moth was poor Cradell. There was no warmth to be got by him from that flame. There was no beauty in the light,—not even the false brilliance of unhallowed love. Injury might come to him,—a pernicious clipping of the wings, which might destroy all power of future flight; injury, and not improbably destruction, if he should persevere. But one may say that no single hour of happiness could accrue ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... gigantic string of diamonds, every one as great as a mountain peak, had been cast down upon the barren surface of the moon and left to waste their brilliance upon the desert air ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... wind fell. The flood of sunset brilliance spread down the radiant sandbars and the bright waterways. The trees were plated with silver and gold, and the sweep of the caving bend was a dark shadow against which the river current swept with ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... take us to dirty illiterate Stratford, from fifty to eighty years after Shakspere's death,—a Civil War and the Reign of the Saints, a Restoration and a Revolution having intervened,—and ask us to be surprised that no anecdotes of Shakspere's early brilliance, a century before, survived ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... her companion's dress and clings passionately to her. The girl, who is not Jane, covers her with a defiant impulse of protection, and confronts the intruder with a brave, proud face of gypsy brilliance, warm, subtile, flushing, spirited, as if she questioned his right to so much ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Head, which is concealed in the Head of the Ancient One, which is not known, extendeth a certain frontal formation, which is formed for brilliance, then flasheth forth the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... more restrained. It had neither the continuousness nor the range of Browning's many-sided conversation, nor did it possess the charm of the ethereal visionariness of Newman's. It lacked the fullness and consummate sweep of Mr. Buskin's talk, and it had neither the historic range and brilliance of Dean Stanley's, nor the fascinating subtlety—the elevation and the depth combined—of that of the late F.D. Maurice. But it was clear as crystal, and calm as well as clear. It was terse and exact, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... flowers were shimmering in the sunshine; the young growth was springing up glorious from the blackness of desolating winter fires. Such tender tones of pink and gray! such fiery-hearted reds and browns and olive-greens! such misty vagueness in the shadows! such brilliance in the sunlight that melted through the openings of the woods! "All alike," indeed! No "accidents" of rock or hill are here, but oh the grandeur of those far-sweeping curves of undulating surface! the mystery of those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... of her discovery, dazzled by the surprising brilliance of the Princess's capture, stupefied by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and ruining her idol's bizarre triumph, poor Miss Portman staggered as Virginia ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... at me quite gravely. For a moment I was afraid that he was going to say something about the paradoxical brilliance of the Irish mind. I made haste ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... best-built man of all the Florentine nobles. Beneath his long, dark locks, which escaping from under his cap, fell in jetty curls over his white brow, his eyes, that had a golden gleam in them, shone out with a dazzling brilliance. He possessed the arms of Hercules and the hands of a Nymph. His shoulders were broad, and his figure slim and supple. He was well skilled in breaking difficult horses and wielding heavy weapons, and a peerless rider at ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... change was taking place and the brain which so astutely cooerdinated many things was totally unconscious of its own transitions. Egotism had made him. A self-faith which took no account of difficulties, had carried him to the apex of his ambitions. Now it was blinding him with its own brilliance. Hamilton Burton was drunk, drunk to the core of his soul, with the strong intoxicant of self-confidence. He looked on life through a mirror—and saw ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... nature,—but it may not be; I have to struggle with the stormy sea Of human life until existence fades Into death's darkness. Thou wilt sing and soar Through the thick woods and shadow-checkered glades, While pain and sorrow cast no dimness o'er The brilliance of thy heart; but I must wear, As now, my garments of regret and care,— As penitents of old their ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... where all past ages of brilliance have failed. Cyclically they were bound to come: the fields ripened in due season; but the wealth of the harvest depended on the reapers. The Elizabethan Age, with all its splendid quickening of the English mind, was coarse and wicked to a degree. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... attractive subjects for both teachers and students. Adolphe Monod's Saint Paul, a series of five discourses, is an inquiry into the secret of the apostle's life, written with deep sympathy and glowing eloquence; and Renan's work, with the same title, gives, with unrivaled brilliance, a picture of the world in which the apostle lived, if not of the apostle himself. There are books on the subject which do honor to American scholarship from the pens of Cone, Gilbert, Bacon and A. T. Robertson, ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... was fifty-eight years of age, and had been for the last three years Prime Minister of England. In every outward respect he was one of the most fortunate of mankind. He had been born into the midst of riches, brilliance, and power. His mother, fascinating and intelligent, had been a great Whig hostess, and he had been bred up as a member of that radiant society which, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, concentrated within itself the ultimate ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... on her from all sides, depriving her of air. She was choking! Terror seized her at the thought that it ... was Death! Must she die? Was it possible? But that brightly shining light had just promised her life, gayety, brilliance! She must hurry to overtake it. And she tried to run. But her feet would not obey her; ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the discipline of sorrow, and presses a spiked cross under his clothes into his side. Everard exalts the discipline of joy. The friends have been privately educated together, and were together at Cambridge. Henry admires Cyril's character and mental brilliance; Cyril regards Henry with condescending affection. Everard is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... speaker, although he had not the same weight, deepened the impression the other had made by his brilliance and rhetoric. He too told the story of the English Ambassador in Berlin who was asked whether England would go to war for "a scrap ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... reigned from Addison to Burke; and then the Quarterlies, with Southey, Lamb, Scott, De Quincey, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, and Leigh Hunt, introduced a simpler, easier tone of the well-bred causeur, as free from classical mannerism as it was free from subtle mechanism or epigrammatic brilliance. Down to about the death of Scott and Coleridge, almost any page of English prose or verse could be certainly attributed to its proper generation by the mark of its ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... moss-grown names upon the tombs, With lighter melancholy than the glooms Of the dead house shadowed us with, and thence Turning, my heart was pierced with more intense Suggestion of a mystical dismay, As in the brilliance of the summer day We faced the vast gray barn. The house was old, Though so well kept, as age by years is told In our young land; but the barn, gray and vast, Stood new and straight and strong—all battened fast At every opening; and where once the mow Had yawned wide-windowed, on ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... divine understanding. Others believed it to be the great diamond of Borneo, captured many years before from the pirates of that fierce land. Piang did not care which it proved to be, as long as it shone and sparkled with beauty. All agreed that its brilliance dazzled the eye, that its magnificence was unrivaled. Ganassi had waited a hundred years for the charm boy who was destined to wear it, and at last the star had proclaimed Piang to be the lucky boy. Through Piang's dreams flitted the visions of ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... leapt to life, a broad and beauteous sheet of scarlet flame, that rose in an ascending barrier high and yet higher at every buffet that it sustained. The more the Wind flung himself upon it in fury, the greater it waxed in power and brilliance, the stronger the heat that flowed from ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... his neck; a hundred threads with mixed carbuncle round his head. Four dimples in each of his two cheeks; that is, a yellow dimple, and a green dimple, and a blue dimple, and a purple dimple. Seven gems of brilliance of an eye, in each of his two royal eyes. Seven toes on each of his two feet, seven fingers on each of his two hands, with the grasp of a hawk's claws, with the seizure of a griffin's claws on ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two black holes swallow the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... prepared for action. No spectacle is more impressive than this of pairs of hunters, thus kindling the forest into a glare. The deer, reposing quietly in his thicket, is awakened by the approaching cavalcade, and instead of flying from the portentous brilliance, remains stupidly gazing upon it, as if charmed to the spot. The animal is betrayed to its doom the gleaming of its fixed and innocent eyes. This cruel mode of securing a fatal shot, is called in hunter's phrase, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac. His shop was crowded with them. Adolph's brother was shrewd and hard to please, but let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his canvases, impress the brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his work, and, undoubtedly, his fortune would at once be made. The season in New York was in the winter. Let Stefan go at once, by the fastest boat, and be first in the field—he, Adolph, who had a little laid by, would lend him the necessary money, and would write ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale |
